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How Have You Lived Without It THIS Long?

I just sort of froze. I looked it over for a while. Then I realized that there is reason in all things, priced it, and packed it away before my giggles gave away my basic small-minded prejudices.

I hope you, too, will be able to control yourself when you come across a book called “The Literary Heritage of New Jersey.” It was a very thin book, and that’s all I’m going to tell you about it. Find it for yourself and make up your own gag, if so inclined.

We have been getting in a lot of things you didn’t know you needed. I like to alert you to these matters so you remember to bring enough cash at the end of July this year. (You ARE saving up for The History of Dentistry in Colorado, aren’t you?)

The bishop’s record collection continues to turn up such treasures. There’s a ten-inch EP on how to teach your congregation to sing the responses at Mass. (If they can sing two notes, they can sing everything required, the cover claims. Big if.) And I find that he did have a dozen or so records in Spanish, after all. They’re not VERY Spanish, in my opinion: Nat King Cole sings in Spanish, The Robert Shaw Chorale Sings in Spanish…if you wanted to know, Petula Clark’s hit “Downtown” comes out in the Spanish version as “Chao, Chao.”

He also has not one but two copies of Mi Dama Bella, the Mexican cast album of My Fair Lady. I note, by the way, that one of Alfie Doolittle’s drinking buddies is played by young Placido Domingo. If you THOUGHT your Placido collection was complete, maybe you’ll need to think that over.

Meanwhile, up in the book department, I have some anomalies for the Health section NOT involving weird diets. Somebody gave me a bagful of extremely technical books on headache control. It took great stamina to price these and pack them away rather than put them on a shelf in my office, but the shelves in my office are full of broken clown figurines and warthog tusks. Somebody else gave me two bags of books on speech pathology. Most of these took up the subject from a medical standpoint, so they’re in Health as well.

The naughty children in the audience will recall that the Health section is also where we put the sex guides. I have nothing terribly outre to report there, but we DID get three books on the history of kissing.

For those of you with empty coffee tables, we have received a few photography books which are probably bigger than your coffee table and potentially heavier, as well. We have not yet gotten one of those deluxe editions which come with their own built in legs, to support the weight. I would suggest to publishers that although the legs may come in handy, I wouldn’t mind if they published books with handles and wheels in other areas than children’s books. (Those are so light they don’t need wheels: some of these art history books do.)

And for those of you seeking celebrity inscriptions, we have books inscribed by Elvis Presley’s Uncle Vernon and John Wayne’s third wife Pilar. Ah, and one of Rusty Warren’s naughty comedy albums is inscribed. Yup, that’s from the Bishop’s collection (maybe he confiscated it in class or something.)

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